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CHAPTER 5

Going Global

As the Web slowly spread around the world, I started to be concerned that people who were putting up servers would not use HTTP, HTML, and URIs in a consistent way. If they didn't, they might unintentionally introduced roadblocks that would render links impotent.

After I returned to CERN from San Antonio, I wrote several more Web pages about the Web's specifications. I would update them when good ideas came back from other users on the www-talk mailing list. While this was a start, I wanted to open the Web technology to wider review. Since everything to date had taken place on the Internet, and much of it involved Internet protocols, I felt that the place to get a process going was the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an international forum of people who chiefly corresponded over e-mailing lists, but who also met physically three times a year. The IETF operates on a great principle of open participation. Anyone who is interested in any working group can contribute.